


lighthouse

by liadan14



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: 4 Things, Canon Queer Relationship, Joe being soft, M/M, Protective Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-01
Updated: 2020-08-01
Packaged: 2021-03-05 23:27:41
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,902
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25653619
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/liadan14/pseuds/liadan14
Summary: Four times Nicky was protective of Joe
Relationships: Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Comments: 64
Kudos: 1197





	lighthouse

**1: 1099, Jerusalem**

Nicolò had spent so long locked in battle with this one particular man, half his face covered in protection from the wind and weather so that all Nicolò knows of him are his fierce, deep eyes, that it is a shock when someone else dares attack. He’s not sure how long they’ve been doing this, killing each other and rising again and killing again, but it’s become a monomania, an obsession, with each new day, such that Nicolò has lost interest in the rest of this bloody, futile mess of a war. It is just this man; surely, if he manages to kill this man, his eyes will leave Nicolò’s dreams and his service to God will be complete.

Nicolò is shocked by his fury when a spear catches the man from the side just as he was poised to strike (another) killing blow.

He turns, roaring, toward the source, sword held high, and barely registers that he knows this man, that he’s broken bread with him more than once, before his sword is crashing down and severing the man’s arm from his shoulder.

-

**2: 1216, Córdoba**

Yusuf has an artist’s soul. It had suprised Nicoló, back when they barely knew each other, a lifetime ago. Now, it’s familiar, how Yusuf will find beauty everywhere, will capture it on the pages of the little books he carries everywhere. He’s working as a builder, here – no, as an architect, really, constructing fine little houses like the one they’re living in, taking a few years to breathe between the atrocities they had both seen.

Nicoló likes many of the houses in Córdoba, Arabic styles made with European materials, a mix of wide open windows and rounded forms with square turrets and narrow archer’s windows, and every now and again, remains of the Roman Empire. It’s like them, to Nicoló, old as time and growing strong on the combination of heritages.

He likes Yusuf’s houses best of all, little things meant for small families. Yusuf has long been one for detail, and Nicoló likes nothing more than the way he weaves flowers into thatched roofs, the care with which he selects the colors for the window-frames.

Well, he likes a few things more.

It is unfortunate that he is not the only one to notice.

“They were watching you again,” he grumbles to Yusuf when he returns home for the evening, dusty from working with mud bricks all day, shining smile and shining curls making the rest of the room dim in comparison.

Yusuf laughs.

“Don’t laugh,” Nicolò warns. “I heard them talking about which of their daughters would suit you best. They’ll probably knock you unconscious and have you before the altar before you know it.”

Yusuf’s laugh is softer, gentler, than the expanse of the warmth he has to offer would lead you to believe. “It is a good thing, then, my love,” he says, with exaggerated patience, “that mosques do not have altars.”

“Shut up.”

“Nicolò,” he says, hands up, pacifying. “My heart. You know there is no one else for me.”

“Prove it.”

Yusuf does, several times.

Nicolò still takes great pleasure in hinting liberally on the next market day that Yusuf fell in love tragically during wartime and can love no other.

-

**3: 1881, Cairo**

They’re staying in a nice hotel, this time, which Nicky appreciates. Andy has a remarkable ability to find the worst places to stay and then claim they’re safer than somewhere with running water.

Cairo has changed a lot in the last centuries. It has been wondrous to explore, although Nicky’s felt the pang of Yusuf missing from his side as he revisits their old haunts and deciphers what history has done to them.

Sighing, he throws open the wide windows to let in night air.

“I’ve missed you,” Joe says from behind him.

Nicky spins around on his heel. 

Joe’s beard is longer than it was when he left, a few weeks ago, but his linen trousers and crisp, white shirt look as delectable as they did then. 

“Yusuf,” he says around a smile. “You’re back.”

“I’m back,” Yusuf agrees. He crosses the room in three swift strides, falling to his knees before Nicky. His forehead presses to Nicky’s hipbone and his arms wrap around Nicky’s knees. Nicky had been hoping for a kiss, but this – this is good, too.

“I thought you just finished worshiping,” he teases. 

Just as Nicky doesn’t fast for Lent every year, Joe is sparing in his pilgrimages. This year, though, they’d been in Cairo already, laying low, and he’d decided Mekka was close enough, travel easy enough, that he could go.

“God’s greatest gift to me was finding you,” Joe says, hoarse and muffled by the cloth of Nicky’s clothes. “It’s only right I should give thanks for that, too.”

Nicky runs his hand through Joe’s hair, tugging at the back of his neck. “How could I say no to that?”

Having the time and space to remember what his worship means to him always shakes something loose in Joe, something powerfully alive and hungry, something that remembers that even their lives will come to an end and that they must enjoy what they have. Nicky sometimes envies that vivacity, when his own worship often ends in long hours spent considering metaphysical questions he can’t answer.

Joe slides to his feet, still pressed against Nicky. Nicky’s fingers clench in his hair and Joe’s eyes slide shut.

“You’ve needed me, haven’t you?” Nicky asks, charmed at how even now, a separation mere weeks old can reduce them to this.

“I’ve always needed you,” Joe says. “Without you, I’d be lost, I’d be an unmoored ship in uncharted water, I’d be—” 

Joe has more words, Nicky knows, beautiful, beautiful words that he will ask Joe to repeat again, later, whispered against his skin, but it’s been weeks for both of them and he’s not quite as calm as he lets on. He kisses Joe, pushing him back against the window-frame, using his grip on Joe’s hair and a second hand on Joe’s hip to steer him were he wants. Joe is gratifyingly pliant.

“My heart,” Nicky murmurs against the side of Joe’s head before he dips down to press kisses to Joe’s neck, the sensitive line where beard meets skin.

Joe makes a slight noise against him, a soft noise.

Nicky has had several missions in life, but recreating that noise as often as possible has been one of the most important for eight centuries. He succeeds with his fingers at Joe’s nipples, with Joe’s leg hitched up around his hips, with Joe’s head thrown back in pleasure and his cock a hard line against Nicky’s belly. 

It’s only a small step from there, to have Joe up against the middle beam of the window-frame, loosened on the slick he’d been carrying, handed over sheepishly as if they hadn’t both known where this was heading. Joe’s less loud than Nicky, when they do this – Nicky can’t help himself, when Joe’s all around him and deep within him, it sets something free in him that can’t be contained, and it pleases Joe so much to make him sob, to make him yell, to make him gasp out his praise and his pleas into the hot air between them. Nicky’s rarely able to say no to what pleases Joe.

Joe is contained, though, when it’s like this, as if the sensations are so much to process he can hardly let the noises cross his lips, soft gasps and quiet moans. Nicky lives for it, for the line down the middle of Joe’s brow where he’s processing the tension, the wide-open split of his body to let Nicky inside. He lives for the way Joe’s gentle hands grapple at his shoulders, for the way Joe’s knees press into his ribs, trusting Nicky to keep him up, to see him through the pleasure to the other side. It’s a duty Nicky takes seriously.

He catches sight of the silhouette outside their window just as he’s about to come undone, and it slows him for a moment, Joe whining in disapproval. Nicky glares over his shoulder, as ruthless as he can be at a moment like this, and Andy vanishes into the night from wherever she came. 

He returns his attention to Joe, then, pressing hot kisses to his collarbone, hitching him higher to fuck him deeper, as Joe reaches for himself at last. Joe comes, warm spend covering the scant space between them, hot and sticky. He twitches like a live wire, legs shaking and arms gripping Nicky tight. It’s all Nicky can do to hold him up when he comes himself, groaning into Joe’s shoulder.

With his own knees too weak after holding them up so long, Joe carries him to bed.

“You were saying you’d be lost without me,” Nicky prompts him, reaching up to stroke his curls off his face.

“I was,” Joe smiles, and leans down to kiss him. “Like a ship at sea.” 

The next morning, Nicky stops by Andy’s door before breakfast. “You saw nothing,” he warns her.

She rolls her eyes. “Nicky, I’ve seen and heard so much over the years—”

“You saw nothing,” he repeats. “You will make no jokes about windows or Joe and I doing anything in them.”

Andy frowns. “Nicky, have I offended you? I thought you two weren’t easily upset by sex.”

Nicky makes an impatient noise. “It’s not about sex,” he says. “I don’t care how often you’ve seen us or caught us. Joe in – the way he was last night, that’s for me. No one else gets to know him like that and I’d prefer to keep it that way.”

She blinks at him. “Duly noted. I can suggest a few places more suited to keeping it that way, though.”

Nicky turns on his heel and walks away.

-

**4: 2020, London**

Joe is quick to anger and quick to cool off. Nicky knows this about him, has known for nearly a millennium. Nicky is quick to anger as well, but slow to act on it, preferring to stew in his anger until he knows how to act with it.

Looking at Joe, now, looking at Joe look at Booker stare out at the water, still hopelessly depressed, still hopelessly hopeless, Nicky knows before Joe speaks what will come. Joe calls him kind, and Nicky can be, but it is Joe who has endless hope and love for the world. Joe is the one who learned to love football to share something with Booker; Joe is the one who broke halal to try Booker’s favorite dishes; Joe is the one who was most hurt by Booker’s betrayal but he is also the one who will forgive Booker first because he understands his pain.

Nicky understands his pain as well, but he refuses to feel it as keenly as Joe does, refuses to let it close enough to cloud his judgment.

“He needs us,” Joe says. “Twenty years with regular check-ins.”

Nicky thinks of watching Joe on that bed, unsure if and when he’d wake up. He thinks of Andy, mortal now, he thinks of never watching the sunrise in Malta from Joe’s arms again.

“Two hundred fifty years,” he says. “No check-ins.”

He lets Joe work him down to a hundred as if that wasn’t his goal all along.

**Author's Note:**

> Based on a prompt on [tumblr](http://bewires.tumblr.com)
> 
> Somehow I find Nicky POV way harder to write than Joe POV
> 
> Title is based on a song by Nena, seminal German popstar, called Leuchtturm. If you translate the lyrics it's, uh, very Joe x Nicky


End file.
